Of Mice and Men s12

Of Mice and Men

Background Research

1.  Stock Market Crash of 1929/The Great Depression - America's "Great Depression" began with the dramatic crash of the stock market on "Black Thursday", October 24, 1929 when 16 million shares of stock were quickly sold by panicking investors who had lost faith in the American economy. At the height of the Depression in 1933, nearly 25% of the Nation's total work force, 12,830,000 people, were unemployed. Wage income for workers who were lucky enough to have kept their jobs fell almost 43% between 1929 and 1933. It was the worst economic disaster in American history. Farm prices fell so drastically that many farmers lost their homes and land. Many went hungry. Within one hundred days the President, his advisors and the U.S. Congress passed into law a package of legislation designed to help lift the troubled Nation out of the Depression. Roosevelt's program was called the "New Deal." The words "New Deal" signified a new relationship between the American people and their government. This new relationship included the creation of several new federal agencies, called "alphabet agencies" because of their use of acronyms. A few of the more significant of these New Deal programs was the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) which gave jobs to unemployed youths and to improve the environment, the WPA (Works Progress Administration) gave jobs to thousands of unemployed in everything from construction to the arts, and the NRA (National Recovery Administration) drew up regulations and codes to help revitalize industry. Later on came the creation of the Social Security System, unemployment insurance and more agencies and programs designed to help Americans during times of economic hardship. Under President Roosevelt the federal government took on many new responsibilities for the welfare of the people. The new relationship forged in the New Deal was one of closeness between the government and the people: a closeness which had never existed to such a degree before. Despite all the President's efforts and the courage of the American people, the Depression hung on until 1941, when America's involvement in the Second World War resulted in the drafting of young men into military service, and the creation of millions of jobs in defense and war industries.

2.  Mental Retardation –

a.  Mental Retardation is a disability that has to do with how well or how fast a person can think and learn. Mentally retarded persons vary in their reading skills and mathematical abilities.

b.  There is difficulty learning and thinking in abstract terms and adapting what she/he hears to everyday situations.

c.  A person who has mental retardation has needs, desires and joys like most of us and wishes to succeed.

d.  There are over 200 causes of mental retardation. Retardation may result because of brain damage or birth defects; however social, environmental, medical and cultural deprivation account for the most retardation and these causes can be prevented.

e.  It is not a disease and it is not MENTAL ILLNESS.

f.  There are 6,500,000 retarded, of these only 200,000 must be taken care of in an institution - all others can do some kind of work.

3.  Migrant Workers - If you migrated to California during this decade, you were among some 1.3 million workers who made the trek. Once you reached California, you continued to be transient. This was the case because you basically "followed the harvest," traveling from place to place to harvest whatever crop was in season. Earlier in the decade, there was a mentality that workers would be provided with the barest means, such as poor food, and then simply "sent on their way.” With reform, that changed and migrant worker camps were established; essentially, these were a federally-sponsored network of camps that provided shelter as well as health care, work counseling and food. If you were a worker traveling from Mexico during this time, or an American of Mexican ethnic origin, you made far less than your white counterparts on the same job. That being said, you still earned more in the states than you did in Mexico during this time. Mexican-American migrants patched together shelter from anything they could find, be it burlap, canvas or branches. Though it's estimated that in the 1920s, 75 percent of migrant workers were of Mexican origin, as the country fell into the Great Depression, white workers took over their jobs, leaving many Mexican-Americans unemployed. Your work options expanded with the advent of World War II. For this reason, migrant work became far less necessary and, in turn, far less desirable.

4.  John Steinbeck (the author) - (February 27, 1902– December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). As the author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. John Steinbeck died in New York City on December 20, 1968, of heart disease and congestive heart failure. He was 66, and had been a lifelong smoker. In accordance with his wishes, his body was cremated, and interred (March 4, 1969) at the Hamilton family gravesite at in Salinas, with those of his parents and maternal grandparents. His third wife, Elaine, was buried in the plot in 2004. The day after Steinbeck's death in New York City, reviewer Charles Poore wrote in the New York Times: "John Steinbeck's first great book was his last great book. But Good Lord, what a book that was and is: The Grapes of Wrath."